It seems 33-year-old Juanita Smith, a pretty blonde who taught elementary school at Hillsboro, had been having an affair for a couple of years with 40-year-old Ralph Patton, former school board president at Richwoods, where Mrs. Smith had previously taught. On Tuesday, December 27, 1961, Patton left his wife, 37-year-old Esther, and went to stay at the Arlington Hotel in DeSoto. When Juanita Smith told her husband, Clarence, that she also planned to leave him, he grew extremely angry and jealous. He met Patton later that evening (the 27th) at a tavern in Richwoods, where the two men had a heated argument.
On Saturday, December 30, Esther met with her husband and his lover at the hotel to try to iron out the marital difficulties in her family, but Patton informed her that he did not intend to return home unless she became sick and needed him.
The two women then left together about mid-afternoon and drove to the Smith residence at Fletcher a few miles west of DeSoto. After Esther Patton talked with the Smith couple for a few minutes over coffee, she left with the stated intention of bringing her husband back with her so that all four parties could hash out the situation.
Instead of retrieving her husband, however, Esther drove to a spot about two and half miles west of DeSoto, pulled off the side of the road, and shot herself with a .32 caliber pistol. Gravely wounded but still alive, she drove into DeSoto, where she fell out of the car into the street. The pistol was found lying in the car seat. Esther was rushed to a hospital in Festus but died shortly after arrival.
Meanwhile, as Smith and his wife were waiting for Mrs. Patton to return, they got into a quarrel about Juanita "messing around with Patton." After waiting for some time with no sign of Esther Patton's return, Juanita took an aspirin and went to bed, and Smith took two aspirins and two "nerve pills" (i.e. tranquilizers). He later claimed that was the last thing he remembered.
What police were able to reconstruct from the evidence, however, was that Smith called Juanita's brother, Lloyd Nickelson, about dusk and told Nickelson and his wife that he was going to kill himself. They rushed to the Smith home and saw him standing in the doorway with a shotgun. As Nickelson approached the house, Smith retreated from the doorway, and a shot came from inside the house. When Nickelson and his wife entered the house, they found Juanita Smith lying on the kitchen floor dying from a shotgun blast and Clarence Smith on the floor, on the opposite side of a table from his wife, dazed and suffering from a wound across his face, apparently self-inflicted in a suicide attempt.
Juanita Smith died on the way to a hospital, and her husband was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. After his wound, which proved superficial, was treated, he was taken to the Jefferson County Jail at Hillsboro.
Tried at Hillsboro in late May 1962 on a reduced charge of second-degree murder, Clarence Smith was found not guilty after a jury deliberation of only about 45 minutes.
Note: Photo from the Crystal City Jefferson County Press-Times
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